“His response to that was, ‘You are asking for the sun, moon and the stars.’ And my response to him – his name was Jim – ‘Jim, you know what makes most frustrating about this assignment? It is not the hardships, it is not the gunfire, it is not the threats. It is dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me. And I added (sic) it by saying, ‘For me the Taliban is on the inside of the building.’”

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, the commander of a Security Support Team (SST) sent home in August – against his wishes and, he says, the wishes of the late Ambassador Chris Stevens – said “we were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had.”

Nordstrom agreed, saying, “it was abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident. And the question that we would ask is again, ‘How thin does the ice need to get until someone falls through?’”

Patrick Kennedy, a career foreign service officer, claims, on his honor, that the denial wasn’t driven by politics. And, when questioned, the State Department claimed funds or the lack thereof had nothing to do with it.

So what did? Why in the world wouldn’t the request of a regional security chief be filled? After all, isn’t that what you pay him for, to assess and recommend? And doesn’t it make sense, unless he’s crying “wolf” every 30 seconds (in which case he should be replaced), to listen to his assessment and err on the side of safety for your people? That is if politics and money weren’t a factor.

Tapper later confronts Presidential spokesman Jay Carney with a very pointed question:

TAPPER: President Obama shortly after the attacks told “60 Minutes” that regarding Romney’s response to the attack, specifically in Egypt, the president said that Romney has a tendency to shoot first and aim later. Given the fact that so much was made out of the video that apparently had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on Benghazi, that there wasn’t even a protest outside the Benghazi post, didn’t President Obama shoot first and aim later?

Big point? Tapper’s exactly right. What we know now, as opposed to what we were told prior too and during the “60 Minutes” broadcast, are totally different. We went from a spontaneous protest over the anti-Islam video that mophed into a murderous attack on our ambassador there to no protest at all, a planned terrorist attack and all of it having to nothing to do with any video.

We know as a matter of course that the terrorists like to do things on certain anniversaries (it was 9/11) and since this was the year their leader had been killed, it stood to reason something like this would likely happen.

We also learned the US was warned about it 24 hours prior to it happening. And, as the hearings have pointed out, additional security assets were denied numerous times and an unacceptable security situation was left in place with the ultimate outcome being an attack, the murder of US citizens to include the Ambassador, the compromise of sensitive information and then a massive attempt at coverup.

Obama has a second debate coming up. It’s the foreign affairs debate. If this isn’t the topic of the night, then it will be clear he’s being covered for by those moderating the debate. Fair warning. Don’t be surprised if that’s the case. What should also be a topic is Russia’s refusal yesterday to renew it’s nuclear arms treaty with the US (how’s that “reset” working out?) as well as it’s overt and material support of both Syria and Iran, China’s apparent comfort with bullying our ally Japan over some South China Sea islands, why our relationship with Israel is so strained, how well he thinks the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt is working out in terms of the best interests of the US (which is, by the way, why we supposedly conduct foreign policy), and the obvious failure of his Afghanistan “strategy” (announce a surge at the same time you announce the pull out).

If those are actually things which are brought up and he walks off the stage afterward thinking he won, Dems can pack it in.

My guess is we’ll be hearing questions and comments about Bain’s investments in China (they have to be careful there since it seems one of Obama’s campaign finance bundlers is in China), as if that has anything to do with foreign affairs.

Hopefully I’m proven wrong and that dismal foreign affairs record (supposedly his “strength”) of this awful administration is actually brought out that night.

47 Responses to “The Taliban is on the inside of the building”

I’ve lost count of the layers of lies here.
Certainly approaching the depth of the weaves on Sheila Jackson-Lee.
Remember how the video was used. Remember how the 1st Amendment was used. All of it in support of a set of lies.
And remember these lies were also spoken in front of the flag-draped coffins of the American killed in this debacle.

Wait…
When Romney tied his dog Skippy to the roof of the car, wasn’t that for a trip to Canada? Foreign country right? See?
And wasn’t he born in Mexico? Another foreign country. Wow. Coincidences? I think not.
And doesn’t he supposedly have accounts in the Cayman’s and a company in Bermuda? More foreign stuff places.
And didn’t he campaign in Texas as recently as September? when he didn’t even have to? The foreign country connections just keep coming for Mittens!

In a foreign affairs debate, Barack is going to pick him off like low hanging Rambutan!

Another day! Another opportunity to learn stuff I will almost certainly never use!
So, now, since I see it is compared texture wise to an apple, can we say Barack is as American as Salak Pie?
I mean, do you know, CAN you make pie with salak?

This is why I enjoyed my time working as a reference page in a public library.

If you ever make it to Indonesia or anywhere with salak, make sure to try it. They are an interesting fruit. I’m not sure I would say they are like apples at all. But they do have a cool snakeskin look and taste good.

“on May 7, the State Department authorized the U.S. embassy in Vienna to purchase a $108,000 electric vehicle charging station for the embassy motor pool’s new Chevrolet Volts. The purchase was a part of the State Department’s “Energy Efficiency Sweep of Europe” initiative, which included hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on green program expenditures at various U.S. Embassies.”

Wonder of wonders. Today we are treated to the miracle of top Dems trying to argue that acting and speaking based on incorrect intelligence is NOT lying.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Well George W. Bush says hello. And though he won’t say it, I’ll add “and go f**k yourselves” Though two can’t compare because Bush acted on what intel he had and Obama FLAT OUT LIED for electoral considerations. Hillary lied with the dead Amb. body in the effing coffin right next to her.

Worse yet, acting and speaking on intel they ALREADY KNEW were false! Bush could at least argue that the WMD issue wasn’t KNOWN to be false when he made it

(and frankly, all those WMD’s moving hither and yon in Syria…well….only a fool, like someone who didn’t anticipate danger at Middle Eastern embassies on 9/11, would be surprised to find Iraqi markings on Syrian WMD’s).

Clarification, I don’t believe the WMD info WAS false. I believe, like other Iraqi equipment, fighter jets in particular, that gear and ordnance made it’s way across the border into ‘friendly’ territory before we launched our destructive inspection of the Hussein regime in Baghdad.

I think the alternative, that they sort of lost the capability but wanted people to believe it could be true as well.
Also, they kept as much as possible to be able to make a come back after sanctions.

Now the Obami appear to be making the compounding error of throwing the intel community under the bus.
The spooks are not responsible. They didn’t construct that loopy narrative about a video and a protest, and push it for weeks.
But screwing them for it WILL further hurt the U.S. long-term. We need MORE and BETTER spooks on the ground.

Well, thank you Ann – further evidence the Choom-master is NOT ready for prime time.
Further evidence he never WAS.
We FINALLY, as is inevitable over time, got a 3:00 am phone call that maybe mattered to the American people. One even the media bastards who have been keeping him covered couldn’t avoid talking about. Though, let’s face it, they DID do their best in the post Benghazi hours – until the UK Guardian demonstrated they weren’t worried about keeping Barack happy and his re-election on track.

But hell, it WASN’T this that’s helping derail it, it was pretty obviously the debate, which didn’t even TOUCH on this subject…

The Oct. 3rd debate showed millions of folks that the Mushroom Media was precisely that: leaving them in the dark and feeding them bullshit for DECADES.
I suspect there is going to be a massive pushback against the MM and it may be the final nail in the self-made coffin.

After looking at all the pictures I could find, I am mystified as to why the Benghazi consulate wasn’t simply abandoned as indefensible long ago. The compound is so large it would be impossible to defend from even a normal Middle-Eastern Anti-American demonstration without a large number of trained, motivated, and armed security personnel, much less the few unarmed rent-a-cops actually present.

I see it as a direct outgrowth of the magic thinking that is SmartPower(tm). When you cannot drag yourself to call terrorism by its name, and sprain your brain to make up palliatives like “work-place violence”, you invite this kind of result. Weakness on our side, and contempt on the part of our enemies.

It goes with their ideology: all bad stuff comes from Western culture, and particularly American capitalism. The natives will treat you well if you are unarmed, well behaved and don’t attempt exploitation. You can even live with Grizzly bears if you act well enough. And if you get raped in Haiti, it is probably the fault of America, i.e., capitalist greed or something.

We wouldn’t even give a damn if those two trouble makers weren’t trying to make the President look bad!
This would just be a non-issue, the American people wouldn’t care at all, hell, we could have lost a hundred Ambassadors and on one would even blink if Romney and Ryan didn’t make such a freaking big deal over it!
Lawd!

Kid wearing a Romney shirt gets told it’s like the KKK and is mercilessly bullied by teachers and students alike.
Kid with a Romney sign in his yard gets told by a bus driver that he should’ve been aborted.
Romney lawn signs are stolen and deficated on.

It’s like Taliban aren’t just inside that building, if you get my drift.

Naw, just another media consultant dropping off his talking points after hours. Obviously too large for the mailbox. Within days it will all be processed and distributed to the media, then to us. It rolls downhill, ya know.

I like Paul Ryan very much.
But for pretty much the same reasons, I liked Dan Quayle, too, and Paul Ryan is another Dan Quayle; e.g., he knows his stuff, but he can’t communicate it properly or effectively.
A salesman, he isn’t. He isn’t addressing Biden’s points properly, because he just wants to talk and he isn’t listening. He is a big disappointment.
Joe is such a jerk. And he is rude and very low class, our first black VP.

Add to the list of foreign policy issues: NY Times journalist Michael Gordon’s reporting of the jawdropping incompetency of the Obama admin’s exit from Iraq and that failure’s ramfications vs the Obama admin’s touting of the Iraq exit as a foreign policy success.

And, I’d like to see a side-by-side comparison of Susan Rice’s 1994 central role in obfuscating about “acts of genocide” in Rwanda and her 2012 central role in obfuscating about “acts of terrorism” in Benghazi.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What do you think the reason for all this was when you come down to it? Was it simply incompetence?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: This is not very Republican, if you will, but when President George W. Bush went aboard an aircraft carrier and said, “mission accomplished” I listened rightfully so to people saying, look, but there’s still problems, and they’re still dying, and quite frankly, things got worse in many ways after that famous statement.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: We’re going through a mission accomplished moment. Eleven years after September 11th, Americans were attacked on September 11th by terrorists who preplanned to kill Americans. That happened and we can’t be in denial. Particularly, when there are– there are compounds all over the Middle East that need to be legitimately protected at a level that security professionals ask for it.